How You Get There Is The Worthier Part
by meridian-rose
Summary: A pre-series fic. Kind, resourceful, and a natural talent where machines are concerned, Kaylee was destined to be a member of the "Serenity" crew


Once upon a time there was a girl named Kaywinnit Lee Frye. Some kids called her Winnie and one called her Kay but her family and her best friend George called her Kaylee.

Kaylee and George loved to play in the mud and she never minded getting her clothes dirty – except for her pink dress. This was her favourite and she wore it only on special occasions like birthday parties or playing High Tea.

High Tea was a fun game, even when George got annoyed with his bow tie or George's teddy bear, Mr Gerson, lost his remaining eye and they had to hunt for it. Felicia, Kaylee's doll, was guest of honour in the finest of all doll's dresses outside of the core planets. Zorah, though headless, came too, 'cause along with Kaylee's own teddy bear, Brown-Bear, that was all the people-like toys she and George had.

"Bears ain't people," George once pointed out.

"They has mouths," Kaylee said. "So they can drink tea, so s'okay if they come." They both stared at Headless Zorah a moment.

"Anyways, Mr Gerson's your favourite toy, he has to come to High Tea." Kaylee picked up the pink teapot and carefully poured lemonade into each tiny pink cup.

One day Kaylee wanted her new toy spaceship to join the party. It was called Mabel, cause everyone knew spaceships were girls. She'd actually swapped Headless Zorah for Mabel. Anne had gotten the spaceship from her older brother and wasn't keen on having what she said was a boy's toy. She said she'd make a new head for Zorah, out of an apple. Kaylee was certain she'd got the better deal and was mighty pleased with the trade.

"Ships ain't people," George protested, adding quickly, "it ain't even got a mouth!"

"Sure she does," Kaylee said, flipping open the docking bay door triumphantly. "See?"

* * *

Now that they had Mabel to play with, their next favourite game became Smugglers and Soldiers. George's beat-up toy horse drawn carriage was subjected to Kaylee's surprisingly adept handiwork. Several bottles of glue, a roll of foil, and some shiny beads transformed the carriage into a military space cruiser. The cruiser would pursue Mabel all over the fields and their gardens, trying to catch her with her illegal cargo – a hold stuffed full of acorns or daisies, depending on the season.

Anne had thought Mabel was just a silly battered old toy but Kaylee loved her so darn much.

When George wasn't around, Kaylee watched people working on machinery. She'd named every piece of equipment in the settlement save for those people'd named themselves, on account that'd be rude.

Since she was polite and never touched things without permission, people generally didn't mind having her around. She asked questions and listened to the answers and said "Thank you" before she went home. Sometimes her mother gave her a plate of cookies to take out with her, which always made folks more agreeable.

Mr Woods especially liked having her around. His son had been apprenticed off world, and he didn't have a wife anymore, so he got lonely sometimes – or so Kaylee's parents said when they thought she wasn't listening. Widower sounded like an insect, like a big spider or something, but Kaylee was fairly certain Mr Woods wasn't any kind of animal. He was mighty good with machinery though and he taught her the names of all the tools he used to fix spaceships.

"You might as well be some use rather than just watching me work," he said, but smiling when he did so. And so he'd ask for tools while he was up to his elbows in grease and Kaylee would hand him the right part. It got so's as he didn't even need to ask after a while, because she knew what tool he'd need next.

Sometimes, when there was nothing else much to do, Kaylee would tinker with the discarded bits and pieces of equipment people couldn't use anymore. Soon she could strip down engine parts, clean them, and reassemble them. Everyone seemed amazed at her natural talent but Kaylee couldn't understand why. She just knew what needed doing and found it difficult to understand why others didn't. As she explained to Mr Woods while she helped him locate a problem on an engine, you didn't even need to know the names of things in order to fix 'em. You just needed to listen to what was wrong and put it right.

Still, it was easier to communicate with your co-mechanic if you knew the names of things. And it made it easier to explain what part you needed to the dealer, if it were a compression coil and not a "squiggly bit, about yay big". So Kaylee dutifully committed all the names of engine parts and processes to memory.

Kaylee's father let her take over all the repairs that needed doing. She fixed the washing machine so's it didn't leak no more, and overhauled their mule so it didn't smoke worryingly. There wasn't a mechanical object Kaylee couldn't repair given the time and parts. But spaceship engines were her favourite things of all.

* * *

As she grew up she was always excited by visitors to their planet. She loved seein' the different types of ships and the modifications that people had made to 'em.

It's not just a ship," she told anyone who would listen. "It's more like a person, s'why we name them. You have to take care of her, love her, keep her in the air. A ship is a thing of wonder and beauty. She means freedom to explore and safety from the vacuum of space."

Most people happily let her look over their ships – especially and increasingly so, young men. She tweaked engines and helped with minor repairs for free, just for the love of doing so; she'd point out where a part was about to give away and destroy half the engine, long before most people would have bothered to check for damage.

While most men looked at her appreciatively, some, even those who let her inspect their ships, expressed their opinion that she was a bit of an oddity. Women, they said, liked baking and such. Kaylee could put together an edible meal and told them so. It was just she never got the same satisfaction from a perfectly cooked and decorated cake as she did from a hum of a finely tuned engine.

She looked at the stars and wondered what it might be like to explore far beyond the world she'd been born and raised on. But things being what they were she had no formal schooling and with no engineering degree she'd never get a job out there in the Black; and even someone willing to take on a natural rather than educated mechanic baulked at the prospect of taking on a female engineer.

Thing with men was they thought their man parts made 'em better with machines which was stupid, because Kaylee always figured it was the stuff people said was "girly" like listening and feeling, that made her good with the ships. Listening to how it was performing, feeling the vibrations throughout the hull, being in touch with the ship, almost part of it. She took care of them and they spoke to her, told her what they needed. But there was no explaining this to some people.

One day, she met a nice enough man who thought he was a better mechanic than he was (and a better lover than he was, truth be told). He was kind of cute and nice enough – and he was travelling on a Firefly. This was Kaylee's absolute favourite type of ship.

They were having sex in the engine room when his captain caught them at it. But he wasn't mad, especially when Kaylee told him about the engine – it was obvious the man loved his ship the way a man ought to. Without really meaning to, she showed up his mechanic pretty good while proving how talented she was, and the captain wasn't in the least phased by the fact she was a girl.

And before she knew it, Kaywinnit Lee Frye was crew onboard "Serenity". It was a battered old boat but sturdy where it counted and Kaylee loved her and all the people onboard .


End file.
